Farewell Sermon Letters and Clay Jars audio (6MB)
2 Cor 3:1-7; 4:1-16
Paul was clearly having problems with the church at Corinth. You can see from his opening sentence in this chapter that he was under criticism. They thought he was always promoting himself and wasn’t nearly as good as he thought he was. They’d clearly forgotten that he’d spent 18 months of his life teaching them and building them up.
So how does he respond?
He says, he doesn’t need to commend himself because he has them as his letter of commendation. Their spiritual maturity, that they’re so proud of, is his CV. He says they’re a letter prepared by him and the other apostles, but written with the Spirit of the living God.
I chose this passage because it has a certain resonance with how I feel about St Thomas’. Not that I’ve experienced the sort of criticism that Paul experienced. In fact the opposite: people have been far too kind, far too blind to my shortcomings. But there is this we have in common: all the commendations people have been making over the last couple of weeks are unnecessary because this congregation is all I need to show that God has been with me. Like Paul, I too can say that you’re written on my heart. In fact one of the temptations we’ll face as we leave here and look for another church to belong to will be the temptation to compare other churches to this wonderful church.
So, has all the praise you’ve heaped on me valid? Am I really as good as some of you want to make out?
If you think that then I’m afraid you haven’t been listening to me for the past 18½ years. What is it I say regularly? Incompetence is the given. This is another reason I chose this passage. You see, what’s happened here isn’t the result of my great competence. As Paul says, I’m not competent to claim anything as coming from me. What competence I’ve shown has come from God. Yes he’s made me competent in some areas to bring about his work. But it’s all his work. As we’ll see in chapter 4 in a moment, this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.
What God has done is to allow me and those with whom I’ve shared this ministry to minister the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit has used that ministry, despite our innate incompetence, to bring people to faith, to grow them in their faith, to build a church that’s healthy, where people love each other, where grace and mercy are applied at every opportunity.
The past 18 years haven’t always been easy can I say. There have been times when I’ve struggled. There have been times when I wondered whether I was doing the right thing. There have been times when there’s been conflict within the congregation, when people have disagreed with things I’ve been promoting. There have been some who’ve left because they didn’t like what was happening. But there’s never been a time when I thought I should give up, or had made the wrong choice in moving into ordained ministry or coming to St Theodore’s.
Again, I resonate with Paul in chapter 4. It’s by God’s mercy that I’m engaged in this ministry; not the same way as Paul. I haven’t ever persecuted the church the way he did so I didn’t need that sort of mercy. But God seemed to wait patiently for a long time for me to get around to realising there was more that I could do as an ordained person than I’d been doing as a lay person. Then when Di & I finally decided I should apply for ordination God led us away from Canberra where we living, back to Melbourne. He looked after us for 3 years in amazing ways: providing Di with a great job, us with a house to live in near Balwyn High School so our kids could go there; looking after us financially while I was at Ridley, so we always had plenty to live on; and finally bringing us to St Theodore’s to a great congregation of mission minded, faithful people.
When we started to think about merging the two congregations it was clear that God was in the midst of us, bringing us together across cultural differences, differences of church tradition, leading us to the decision to redevelop this site, providing the finance to build this wonderful building.
And because I’ve always been aware of the way God has provided for us, I’ve never lost heart. I’ve never lost confidence in the God who has brought us to this place; or in the power of the gospel to change lives.
It’s interesting that what Paul says here in v2 is still relevant today. There are ministers around today who’ve lost heart, who’ve lost confidence in the gospel. And what do they do? They practice cunning. They try to manipulate people into joining the church without realising that people also need to join Jesus and that means hearing the gospel. Others decide that the claims of the Bible are too hard to believe, so they falsify God’s word, they explain away the miracles, even the resurrection, in order to make it easier for people to take part in the life of the church. But again, that doesn’t actually help them.
Rather people need to hear the open statement of the truth. I hope that one of the reasons you’ve been helped by me is that I’ve worked hard to openly proclaim the truth of God’s word, to teach it to you in a way that allows you to discover that truth for yourself. I know I’ve had some success because Jude was telling me how she’s been discovering lately in her small church in Tassie, just how much scriptural knowledge she’d picked up over the years, much of which was at St Theodore’s.
So why is it that an open proclamation of the gospel brings success?
It’s because the gospel brings the light of the glory of Christ who is the image of God, isn’t it? It’s because as we proclaim the gospel we’re not proclaiming some human concoction but a message from God that Jesus is Lord.
But it isn’t just the message; it’s the fact that the Holy Spirit takes that message and shines it into our hearts to awaken us to its truth and its glory.
You see the message we proclaim is a message that comes with extraordinary power. What power is that? Well, it’s the power to change human hearts, human lives; in fact even to change human history. Have you felt that power in your life? Are you aware of how God has changed you in perhaps unexpected ways? I’m sure he has whether you’re aware of it or not.
So can you see what a privilege it is to be a member of God’s people, charged as we saw not long ago, with telling others about Jesus? And can you see how reassuring this message is, that the gospel is God’s power for salvation to everyone who hears.
But notice too that you don’t need to be an expert or a great speaker, or a spiritual guru. He says “But we have this treasure in clay jars.” We’re all weak, fallible, vulnerable, mortal beings who sometimes waver, whose words may be hesitant, who might not even know the right words to say. But nevertheless we’re enabled to exercise a powerful ministry – shining light into the darkness. He says even though we carry the death of Jesus in our bodies it’s so we can demonstrate that the life of Jesus is also within those mortal bodies.
Our frailty is part of our message - our mortal bodies expressing Jesus’ immortal life. This is a mystery that we can only describe without being able to explain it. God takes the weakest among us and uses them to demonstrate his extraordinary power. God loves to turn our human expectations on their head.
And what greater example of that is the death and resurrection of Jesus. Who would have thought that God’s Messiah would allow himself to be put to death so easily? Who would have imagined that having been put to death he’d come back to life in a mere three days? And not just back to life, but back to life eternal.
That, he says is our great motivation for speaking the gospel: “We believe and so we speak”: What do we believe? He says: “Because we know that the one who raised Jesus from the dead will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence.” And he finishes by saying he does it “for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God
We speak the gospel because we know that Jesus has risen from the dead, because we know that God will also raise us from the dead and because as we tell of his grace the message will go out with increasing thanksgiving from those who receive that grace and mercy, all to the glory of God.
I want to leave you with this reminder: as much as I may have done good things while I’ve been here, I’ve only ever been a clay vessel. I remember saying at my first service, if you expect me to be perfect, forget it. I’ll make as many mistakes as anyone else. I’m just as incompetent on occasion as the next person. But that isn’t what matters. What matters is that God is at work among us. God will continue to work just as effectively when I’m gone. God will use your next vicar to do equally extraordinary things. Your task is to see that you allow God to work; that you take your part in doing God’s work here; that you take the opportunities that come your way to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and yourself as servants of those who have yet to hear.
I thank God for his extraordinary goodness to me in allowing me to contribute to the growth of this wonderful part of his kingdom. Thank you, every one of you for your part in that growth. May God continue to bless you for many years to come.
